1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a microwave oven having at least one rice cooking operation and a method of controlling the same, and more particularly, to a microwave oven having at least one rice cooking operation and a method of controlling the same in which rice is cooked by automatically sensing the amount of rice and water content.
2. Description of the Related Art
A microwave oven cooks food using high frequency electromagnetic waves generated from a magnetron. Accordingly, as the operations to cook food have become more varied, a microwave oven having a rice cooking operation has been developed. In such a microwave oven, rice cooking is generally performed as follows. First, a user fills a bowl with a predetermined amount of rice and water and sets up data on these predetermined amounts through a key input unit. Then, the rice cooking is executed according to a program stored in a memory of a microcomputer. The program controls an output level and heating time of the magnetron according to the amount of rice and water mixture. Thus, by controlling the output level and heating time of the magnetron, the microwave oven cooks rice according to different processes including allowing rice to absorb water, to be boiled, and to be steamed.
However, the conventional microwave oven requires setting up information related to the amount of rice and water manually, thereby making the process inconvenient to a user.